Abstract
The concept of the master-signifier has been subject to a variety of applications in Lacanian forms of political discourse theory and ideology critique. While there is much to be commended in literature of this sort, it often neglects salient issues pertaining to the role of master signifiers in the clinical domain of (individual) psychical economy. The popularity of the concept of the master (or “empty”) signifier in political discourse analysis has thus proved a double-edged sword. On the one hand it demonstrates how crucial psychical processes are performed via the operations of the signifier, extending thus the Lacanian thesis that identification is the outcome of linguistic and symbolic as opposed to merely psychological processes. On the other, the use of the master signifier concept within the political realm to track discursive formations tends to distance the term from the dynamics of the unconscious and operation of repression. Accordingly, this paper revisits the master signifier concept, and does so within the socio-political domain, yet while paying particular attention to the functioning of unconscious processes of fantasy and repression. More specifically, it investigates how Nelson Mandela operates as a master signifier in contemporary South Africa, as a vital means of knitting together diverse elements of post-apartheid society, enabling the fantasy of the post-apartheid nation, and holding at bay a whole series of repressed and negated undercurrents.
Highlights
There is a good deal of excellent literature that explores the Lacanian notion of the master-signifier from the perspective of political discourse theory and ideology critique (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Žižek, 1996; Stavrakakis, 1997, 1999; Laclau, 2007)
Rival ideological terms come to be re-integrated, put into a different set of signifying relations. This is a situation in which nothing can be said to have changed yet where everything is, utterly transformed
The critical injunction suggested by Bailly’s comments is vital, namely the idea that we investigate the negated opposite or underside of a given master-signifier, that we ask ourselves what the master-signifier holds at bay and keeps beyond the domain of the thinkable?
Summary
There is a good deal of excellent literature that explores the Lacanian notion of the master-signifier from the perspective of political discourse theory and ideology critique (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Žižek, 1996; Stavrakakis, 1997, 1999; Laclau, 2007). Added to this is the inevitable prospect that the words one uses in such situations will seem hopelessly derivative, abstract and formulaic, devoid of any real personalized significance Such a situation would be made even more trying should the interviewer press on and on, interrogating each given belief—be it a deeply-held personal, political or even spiritual commitment—with the hystericizing prompt: “But why?,” “Why do you believe that?” The unavoidable conclusion to such an unrelenting line of questioning would be a circular—and no doubt exacerbated—retort: “Because I do!” Such a retort, like that of the exasperated parent’s “Because I said so!” is sometimes all that can be offered in order to hold a deluge of questions— and inadequate answers—at bay. The reasons I love someone (or something) can never be wholly rationalized or exhausted by a string of signifiers, partly because such signifiers refer on and on to other signifiers without ever “hitting the real.”
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